Monday, October 19, 2015

I’m asking myself this very question as November approaches
and another National Novel Writing Month comes along with it. I’ve done this three times and I’m thinking
about doing it again this year. Why
would I subject myself to this torture for thirty days?

The pros:

For one, it keeps me writing so it’s very good for
discipline. I won’t sign up at all
unless I’m committed to finishing by the deadline.

However, I think insanity also plays a part in this because
I have too much on my plate this year to give this a second thought. I have a PT job, the holidays are coming, and
we all know what that means when you work in a retail environment. The only redeeming feature here is that hubby
will be out of state for part of the month.
When it’s only me, I can eat anything at any time and not make a fuss
with dinner or clean up. I can also
adjust my sleeping schedule to a certain point, having to consider the job as
well. I’m thankful I can function on two
hours of sleep. Sometimes that comes in
handy.

Two, they have great discussion boards to take advantage of
if you’re stumped with your writing endeavor.
All you have to do is post a question and some brilliant person will
come along to answer. You’ll find a
discussion boards for almost every topic you can imagine. I have to admit I rarely take advantage of
this discussion feature because, as we all know, it’s easy to be caught up
socializing and not working on your word count.

NaNo requires you to write 50,000 words in a month. If you make it, you “win” and different
things are available to you, such as writing software and books at
discounts. There are also helpers for
editing and if you get your book finished in six months, there’s a discount on
self-publishing. At least there was last
year. This never happens for me. I’m still working on my last three NaNo
projects. Someday I’ll have a series
worth publishing.

The team at NaNoWriMo sends emails and pep talks to your
inbox. Some brilliant people write
these, designing them to keep you motivated, your butt in the chair, and your
hands on your keyboard.

There’s a great community of other writers at NaNo and if
you’re lucky enough to live in a bigger city, there will probably be organized write-ins
with others that live there. This helps to
keep you going too, although my town is too small to take advantage of this.

If you make your 50,000 words by November 30, you’ll feel so
great and have such a sense of accomplishment.
Your story may not be finished, or ready to edit, but you’ll have a great
start to a book.

Everything has a downside and NaNo does too.

The cons:

You must write 1667 words a day to finish by November
30. This is a huge commitment. It takes time away from your family and
holiday activities.

You need to prepare yourself for writing your brains out and
let nothing hold you back. You have to
stay disciplined and committed. There’s
no penalty if you don’t “win,” but you’ll feel better about yourself if you do
and also know you can do it.

Don’t get distracted by anything unless your house is
burning down. This means avoid FB and
any other social platforms. Don’t spend
hours on email during your writing time, if you want to finish. Save this for after you make your daily word
count.

Do not watch TV or anything else until you’ve reached your
daily goal. If you can do more words,
then you can take a day off during the month, which is the way I do it. That way you don’t feel totally left out of
things going on in your daily life and your husband and kids won’t want to kill
you.

Brew lots of coffee and stock up on snack food, which is bad
thing to say, but sometimes that’s all you can do if you want to keep
going. You don’t want your hunger to sidetrack
you. If you leave your chair, there’s a
good chance you won’t be back in it later in the day. I’m only speaking from experience here. When you’re in the zone, stay put.

Some last thoughts:

If you intend to participate, do your character sketches now
and write down plot points for your story.
You are allowed to do this beforehand.
You just can’t start writing your story until November 1. I usually make a few notes, even being the
pantster I am. That way you aren’t
totally lost and know what you want to cover in the story, and you don’t get
your characters mixed up that way, which helps later during the edit
process.

Resist the urge to edit as you go. I can’t stress this enough. You don’t want to spend any time on anything
except writing. Editing can wait.

Back up your work daily.
Don’t turn the computer off until you do. Writing is too hard to risk losing
everything. I back up everything twice,
once to my external drive and once to Dropbox, which is a great cloud storage
place and is free, up to 2 GB of space.
If you need this program, you can get it by clicking on Dropbox
above. THIS IS A CLEAN LINK. I downloaded one last year that had viruses
attached, so be careful. Now, or any
time, you don’t want to deal with that.

Sign yourself up here for NaNo, so that’s done when the
first rolls around.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

A writer died and was given the opportunity of going to
heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits,
she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming
sweatshop. As they worked, they were
repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer.
“Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw
rows of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with
thorny lashes.

This is part of a blog post on the Writer’s Relief
website. They stumbled across some
laughs for writers from VillanovaUniversity and this was
one of their favorites.

This article has been reprinted with permission of Writer’s
Relief, an author submission service that has been helping creative writers
make submissions since 1994. Their work
is highly recommended in the writing community, and there are TONS of freebies,
publishing leads, and writer’s resources on their website. Check it out here.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

I received this book as a PDF file from Rasheed. I was surprised to find it in my email box on
September 22. I’ve been reading his blog
posts since the A to Z challenge last April and really like his voice. Thanks so much, Rasheed, for your book of
life’s adventures so far.

This book is a quick read and very interesting. Most areas are two or three pages long. I found it well written and filled with
things Mr. Hooda has learned in his life through the people he’s met during his
working life and in his travels across the US.
This man has big goals for scaling mountains and has lots of
energy. What a great thing. He also has a positive attitude about life
even when things aren’t going their best.

Rasheed has chosen the nomadic lifestyle for himself, not
wanting to be a “slave to wages”. The
nomadic lifestyle isn’t for me. This
clearly won’t work for everyone, but we each have to choose our own path and
the author makes that clear. He’s having
a blast sharing his travels and thoughts about life on his journey through the
states.

I think you’ll find this an enjoyable book to read. Rasheed shares his thoughts on intuition,
money, mentors, family and friends, finding your right place in the world and
living your dream as you touch other lives with every action you make whether
you know this or not. This book will
make you think and is written in a down-to-earth fashion. As I read the short stories, I felt as if I
was sitting in the room with this author and listening to his tales.

Life is full of difficulties and Rasheed shares some of his,
along with some tragic happenings, as well.
He’s trying to live by the law of attraction (like attracts like) and mindfulness. Good for him.
We should all be aware of these things in our journey on Earth. By focusing on positive or negative thoughts, a person will bring positive or negative things into their lives.

The book is filled with lovely quotes too. And I love this one from the author: “Dreams do come true. But first, you must have a dream. So dream on and dream big.”

Friday, October 2, 2015

I love
writing tools, and when I find a good one, I have to share. Anyone who has
followed my blog has heard me mention Grammarly. I use Grammarly for every word
I write whether it’s for an email, cover letter, resume, short story, or my new
novel. I have the ability to use it directly on their website or while I’m
typing in Word (they offer a word plug-in).

Recently,
Grammarly became available for Google Chrome as an add-on which means that it
will assist you while you write emails, blog posts, and even Facebook posts.

With each
error correction and suggestion, I’m able to improve my writing on a consistent
basis. Grammarly also emails a report concerning your usage and where your
problem areas are. Since grammar isn’t my strong suit, I’m now able to identify
my mistake while writing. It helps me become more aware especially since I’m a
visual learner. I traditionally suck at commas! :)

So if
there is one tool I would recommend its Grammarly. And, here’s the really
exciting part. I’m offering a free 3-month premium trial to a lucky winner! You
can try it out for yourself and watch your writing improve.

Here’s the inside scoop about Grammarly from Wikipedia:
Grammarly carries out more than 250 grammar checks; it proofreads and detects
plagiarism in the process and finally provides users with a list of possible
errors for correction.

Grammarly
also provides citations when it detects plagiarism. Users can click on a
“thumbs up” or “thumbs down” icon to let Grammarly know whether the result was
helpful.

·A contextual spell
checker that determines the appropriate spelling of a word as it is used in a
sentence; thus, it finds misspelled words and also identifies correctly spelled
yet incorrectly used words.

·Grammarly Plug-in
for Microsoft Office, which adds Grammarly to Microsoft Word and Outlook.

·An online Grammarly
Handbook resource covering what the Grammarly platform does in checking grammar
and syntax.

To enter
you need to:

·Follow my blog

·Share this post on
Facebook and Twitter

·Comment below WHY
you would like to win and also leave the Facebook post or Twitter link that you
shared

I’ll have
the drawing next Tuesday, October 6th, and will announce the lucky winner!

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Welcome to my Ramblings

I may chat about my books, what I'm writing or reading, or just general thoughts about writing and publishing. Comments are welcome, if anyone wants to interact with me. I'd like to hear about your writing and publishing experiences.